I’ve been thinking a great deal about you, and this was before I read your more recent posts. I am so sorry you’d been struggling with so much stress.

My heart goes out to you. I had some extreme amounts of stress when I worked in forensics. And the only solution for me was to find other work. Fortunately, I ended up finding similar work in a medical genetics laboratory. Unfortunately, when my daughters came along, trying to do the work/mom thing was impossible after two and a half years of trying to. My supervisor, who was a mother herself and could have a flexible schedule to allow herself the opportunity to deal with the unexpected (days off school, sicknesses, doctor’s appointments for the kids, etc), would not extend to me the same courtesy.

After it went into my last performance review that I was 10 minutes late and missed an important call, I was highly upset. I never had a bad performance review until I had to try and juggle work and family. Needless to say, it was one of the main reasons why I lost any sort of loyalty to work.

I also know that you can’t just “up and quit” what you are doing. I keep thinking of what a fantastic career you have, am sure you have worked so hard to get there, and have done some amazing stuff…but when it exacts such a severe price to your health, you have to wonder what it is all for.

I won’t tell you what to do, except maybe try Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Yoga classes. A good quality fish oil for hypothyroidism would help if you aren’t already taking one. I take that with b-complex. And after my menses, I take an iron supplement and a vitamin C because I always feel my energy levels sagging even more due to the blood loss.

I hope you are feeling better now.

Casey

Do you like yoga at all? Yoko teaches a great power yoga class Tuesday/Thursday mornings. Maybe try it out while you are on leave. Bonnie Mc teaches yoga too but her class is more gentle/stretching. I need to get back to a more consistent yoga practice myself.

Sigh…